>> Every four years, the race for attorney general in Wisconsin gets overshadowed by the attention paid to the race for governor.

But the attorney General's office is extremely important.

With the control of the Department of Justice and the ability to represent the state in lawsuits in both state and federal courts.

Here and now, senior political reporter Zac Schultz sat down with each of the candidates.

You can see those longer interviews on our website.

But this week, we look at the key issues.

Each of the candidates wants voters to focus on when they fill out their ballot.

>> All right.

Good morning everybody.

Thank you for being here.

I'm Josh Kaul, and I'm here to talk about my reelection campaign for attorney General.

>> Good morning.

Great to be with everybody.

I am running for Attorney general.

>> Democrat Josh call and Republican Eric Toni are no strangers to running against each other for attorney general.

This election is a rematch of the 2022 race, where Kaul narrowly defeated Toni.

It's not often that we see a rematch in statewide elections, but Toni says a mini stroke and open heart surgery in 2023 made him want to run again.

>> I was starting to think about what do I want to continue to do if this surgery goes well?

But I was at that point just trusting God through the hands of my medical team that hoping and praying things would go well and I, as it got closer, knew that I would want to run again.

>> Kohl says the rematch should make it >> Easy for the voters.

>> One of the things that's interesting about a rematch is you can look back at what the candidates said in the prior race and see how those things held up.

And I think that that's really instructive here.

In the last campaign, it was shortly after Roe v Wade had been I had filed a lawsuit seeking to block enforcement of a law that dates back to the mid 1800s.

Eric Toney my opponent had attacked me for that case.

He called it a partisan partisan stunt.

He said it was should be dismissed.

>> The Liberal majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court agreed with Kohl and overturned the 1849 abortion law.

A 20 week limitation that was already on the books is now the law in Wisconsin.

Toni says he would not seek to change that.

>> I have not and am not advocating for any changes to the law in Wisconsin.

And if there is going to be any change, that's something that needs to be voted on by the people of Wisconsin and not decided on by politicians in Madison.

>> Toni says the issue voters need to look at from the last four years is the crime lab.

After his close loss in 2022, Toni joined Kohl in the spring of 2023 to push the Republican controlled legislature to fund 16 more positions at the state crime lab.

>> I've always talked about putting public safety over politics.

I stood with our attorney general after that 2022 race, helping him get more crime lab positions in that state budget, working with Republican legislators behind the scenes.

>> The legislature approved just three of the 16 positions.

None of them for DNA analysis in the 25 budget call.

Tried again to lobby for more positions.

>> In the upcoming state budget.

In particular, we've requested 19 positions.

finance gave them zero.

Toni says the lack of investment doesn't matter.

>> What we saw our attorney general do during this period is put a hiring freeze in place.

And so I mentioned those crime lab positions.

I helped him get.

Well, over a year later, we saw a nonpartisan audit released of our crime labs, and they said he hadn't even filled those positions.

We saw that he had less DNA positions filled compared to 2020.

And we see that they're taking for DNA, for example, taking on average over twice as long to test less from when he started to where we are now.

>> Now, in terms of the labs themselves, on a day to day basis, one of the things I've been clear about is where we need resources from the state legislature.

And in the last state budget, my office requested 19 additional positions for the labs.

Eric Toney as allies in the state legislature provided zero positions.

And look, that's not an accident.

This is politics being played here.

>> Toni accuses Kohl of overlooking the crime lab in favor of joining federal lawsuits against the Trump administration.

against all of the political lawsuits when he first ran.

And now that's effectively what he's running his entire campaign on is those lawsuits where he's putting politics over public safety.

>> Donald Trump was sworn into office for the second time on January 20th, 2025.

Josh Kaul in Wisconsin joined their first lawsuit against the Trump administration the very next day, challenging a Trump executive order that threatened to end birthright citizenship.

Since then, call has joined more than 60 lawsuits, many dealing with federal funding cuts that Trump tried to implement through executive orders.

>> We have consistently fought back, and we have won case after case.

And what that has meant is that those funds either are not illegally conditioned or they're not frozen or ultimately cut, and instead, they can come to our communities and support critical programs in Wisconsin.

>> Toni says Kohl was wasting resources because Democratic attorneys general from other states were already suing.

>> He's not filing lawsuits.

What he's doing is called joining them.

So the vast majority of those lawsuits, whether he signs on to that or not, are going to continue to move forward because other attorneys general across the country have actually done the legal work on those.

>> Well, of the 60 plus cases that we've been involved in, I don't think any single Republican AG has joined us in challenging the Trump administration in any of those cases.

And I'm not aware of a single case where Eric Toney has said he would have challenged the Trump administration.

What that would mean in some cases is Wisconsin wouldn't get the relief that happens in court, because in a number of these cases, it's only the states that have brought the challenge that get the relief.

And so it could be that we no longer have protection for critical programs.

If an AG is not part of one of those challenges.

voters elected a governor and attorney general from different parties.

Typically, the race for governor gets the most votes, and then about 2% of voters don't vote for the AG at all.

But twice over the last five elections, a candidate for attorney general received more votes than that party's candidate for governor in 2006, Republican J.B.

Van Hollen became the last AG elected alongside a governor from the other party.

In that case, Democrat Jim Doyle.

And in 2022, Eric Toni received 30,000 more votes than Republican gubernatorial candidate Tim Michaels.

In 2026.

That means Toni may need to rely on Republican Tom Tiffany defeating Democrat David Crowley in the race for governor, or once again, he will have to outrun the top of the ticket.

>> I'm running my own race from when I got into this back in October of 2025.

I talked about the forensic testing failures, the fentanyl epidemic, and how partisan, our attorney general, has become.

I mean, we we have driven home issues that affect people in all 72 counties.

And that's what I've been focused on is what our Department of Justice can do to help protect everybody in Wisconsin by putting public safety over politics.

>> Kohl has won twice by less than a percentage point.

>> The results tend to be fairly close, but in Wisconsin, we have a lot of close elections.

And so sometimes those small differences can can make a big difference in the outcome.

But I'm running based on on my record and my time as AG.

And, you know, the focus can be different.

My top priority as attorney general has been public safety.

And we've made significant progress on really important public safety issues.

>> Reporting from Madison.

I'm Zac Schultz for Here and now.

>> In addition to the >> In addition to the